Cristiano Ronaldo, left, and Lionel Messi have no doubt been poring over the results of the Ballon d'Or. Photograph: Patrick Seeger/Corbis

Tory MPs have long described themselves as "the most sophisticated electorate in the world" – and that verdict dates back even to the time before they triumphantly revealed their new party leader was to be Iain Duncan Smith.

Quite how the Ballon d'Or electorate would classify themselves is unclear. They are certainly not the least sophisticated electorate in the world – as we have seen, you could hardly deny Conservative members that honour – but they are unquestionably Fifa's most exposed electorate. Or rather, its only exposed electorate, the workings of its more significant ballots being a matter of the utmost secrecy.

Since Fifa assumed responsibility for the award in 2010, when it merged with its player of the year gong, world football's governing body has scrupulously released the full breakdown of votes cast in the Ballon d'Or, possibly imagining that this single piece of transparency will serve as an effective decoy for its pathological obscurantism on all other electoral matters.

So perhaps it is because we have been starved of all other candour as far as Fifa is concerned that there has been so much poring over the Ballon d'Or results. The first thing to note is that this electoral college didn't garland the footballing equivalent of IDS, with arguably the only surprise about Cristiano Ronaldo's anointment being that it was in any way close run.

Ronaldo himself? Well, he continues to resist his relationship with Lionel Messi being shoehorned into my ill-fitting Salieri-Mozart analogy. He declined to acknowledge even grudgingly the genius of Messi – a non-favour cordially returned by the Barcelona forward.

Perhaps the pair felt trapped in the football awards version of the prisoner's dilemma and, having spent the past few weeks miserably game-theorising about the possible outcomes of working together, ended up opting for total non‑co‑operation. Then again, perhaps both really are convinced that the other one is no better than the fourth-best player in the world.

They would certainly not be alone in appearing parti pris in their deliberations, with the tally of "Really? Really?" votes this time round including Vincent Kompany's for Yaya Touré, and the Spain coach, Vicente del Bosque, completely ignoring both Ronaldo and Messi in favour of Xavi and Andrés Iniesta (alongside Franck Ribéry).

As for Fifa, it remains encouraging that it should be so willing scrupulously to reveal the voting caprices of the game's biggest stars, while the game's biggest suits are effectively able to award multibillion dollar contracts away from prying proletarian eyes.

You have to question whether this one stagy piece of transparency is quite the fig leaf for its other electoral activity that it might desire, conferring a veneer of probity on darker matters. After all, the executive committee's voting on World Cup bids has somehow failed to entice analysis by the defining psephologist of the age, the brilliant Nate Silver – presumably for the same reason that Silver declines to get involved in examining certain TV phone votes, or predicting small swings one way or the other in key Zimbabwean districts.

The last time the World Cup bids went to the polls, you'll recall, 2018 hopefuls England were promised the votes of everyone from Jack Warner, whom they bizarrely and amusingly appear to have believed, to Uncle Tom Cobleigh. When the anonymous tally came in, they were revealed to have scooped just the two, one of which came from our own ex-co member, the brilliant and brave Geoff Thompson. Or rather, one of which is always said to have come from Thompson. On the basis of absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I nurse hopes that it will one day be revealed that Thompson actually voted for someone else by mistake because he found the process defeatingly complex. One for a later volume of his coolly anticipated autobiography, anyway.

Still, the morning after the Ballon d'Or gala felt like the right moment for a call to Zurich, where a Fifa press officer audibly drew in her breath when asked whether there were any plans to extend the transparency of Ballon d'Or voting to ex-co votes. "It's not the same!" exclaimed madame. Why not? It's a vote. It could be.

"Well I mean … you know how it works."

Yes, I think we all know how it works.

"I could not possibly give comment on this."

You don't feel able to be open about openness?

"As you know," came the reply, accompanied by a theatrical sigh, "we have many, many committees and task forces working on this …"

Of course. Has any of them groped their way toward the idea that transparency would be something to which an organisation as serially mired in corruption allegations as Fifa might usefully aspire? Are there any plans, ever, to offer ordinary football fans a glimpse of the process via which decisions are taken for the greater footballing good?

These, alas, were instantly deemed questions that can be put only by email – so I shall let you know the second, or indeed the year, that Fifa gets back to me. Somewhere in a lead-lined chamber carved beneath the peak of an Alp, presumably, and next to Fifa's long-range ballistic arsenal – must lie the results of every World Cup ballot for decades. And assuming that the entire lot is not blown up by Sepp Blatter in his final showdown, we should continue to press for openness on Fifa votes that actually matter, until we are deemed worthy of a peek at them.